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  • 1 min read

Dan Bricklin doing some interesting podcasting

I just came off listening to Dan Bricklin's first podcast, an interview with Linda Hamel of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts about patents , intellectual property and open source. Quite interesting info. I am looking forward to listening to the other ones. One link, right off the bat is to Linda Hamel's own web site with lots of interesting resources about Open Source licensing in the public arena. Particularly cool is this huge Excel chart doing a comparison of all the multitude of open source licenses. Technorati Tags: opensource, legal

  • 1 min read

Good article about software design

Just add this one to your reading list:

"(XP) challenges many of the common assumptions about software development. Of these one of the most controversial is its rejection of significant effort in up-front design, in favor of a more evolutionary approach. To its detractors this is a return to "code and fix" development - usually derided as hacking. To its fans it is often seen as a rejection of design techniques (such as the UML), principles and patterns. Don't worry about design, if you listen to your code a good design will appear." (From "Is Design Dead?")"

Thought-provoking. Technorati Tags: software, recommended, technical

  • 1 min read

Counting blog impact

Interesting article about counting blogs makes a good point right off the bat:

"First, let's step back and consider why we're counting blogs at all. You no longer see articles that attempt to demonstrate the legitimacy of the Web by stating how many Web pages there are. But blogs are still in the process of entering mainstream consciousness, so numerical credibility is important; bloggers themselves cite the statistics a lot." (from Wall Street Journal Online)

Technorati Tags: blog

  • 1 min read

Come on over, the water’s fine! Look who is recommending Macs!

I love my Mac , as y'all know. I was amused to read about Intel CEO Paul Otellini who publicly recommended getting a Mac. He was being interviewed by Walt Mossberg at the "D" conference:

'… Asked whether a mainstream computer user in search of immediate safety from security woes ought to buy a Mac instead of a Wintel PC, he said, "If you want to fix it tomorrow, maybe you should buy something else.' (from Mac News Network, but I saw it in several other places.)

Meanwhile, in a related story, Dave Winer sounds like he's tempted to jump onto the Mac bandwagon. Come on over, the water's fine! For those who want to read more, here are some links to my experiences,

Technorati Tags: mac, microsoft

  • 1 min read

Great musical: Falsettos at the Huntington Theatre

HtcfalsettosprodI Just came back from seeing 'Falsettos', an unusual (and unusually good) musical, at the Huntington Theatre, in Boston. The themes cover the gamut from family, children, love, judaism, homosexuality, life and death. The music is unusual and complex and very nice. I recommend it highly. So much that I also just got the music from iTunes! Technorati Tags: music, recommended

  • 2 min read

VC: Rumors of its demise are probably premature

Not that I'm an expert or anything… In the last few days there have been several articles about the problems in High Tech Venture Capital. One particularly interesting one was in the New York Times on Sunday talked about the exodus of recently minted venture capitalists from the business:

"We can't really have people learning on the job anymore ," Mr. Kramlich said. Two-thirds of the partners who were at N.E.A. in 1997 are no longer at the firm, he said, and then cited an internal study that went a long way in explaining why: the surviving third accounted for 85 percent of the firm's profit." (from New York Times)

Another one, from Technology Review, a first hand report from Howard Anderson, about why he is leaving the business:

"Good -bye! We venture capitalists like to think of ourselves as giants striding across the technology landscape, showering money on terrific young entrepreneurs, adding value, creating jobs, nurturing real companies. We are financial samurai. But I am giving it up. Why? […] First, Technology Supply is bloated. […] Second, there's a good reason why technology spending is stagnant. […] Third, the financial markets for technology companies is no longer exuberantly stagnant. […] Fourth, these changes in Venture Capital are structural, not cyclical."(From Technology Review.)

For me, I'll say, I consider these bullish signals. The fact that there is public hand-wringing about the "VC Model" makes me predict that the next round of Venture funds will do better than the last few. But what do I know? I was wondering if any of my VC friends would care to respond? Technorati Tags: startups, vc